Page:Attainder of treason and confiscation of the property of Rebels - 1863.pdf/12

4 say three billions, exclusive of slavery—including Western Virginia, but not including any portions of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, or Missouri. A portion of this Western Virginia should not, of course, be included in any confiscation; but there is more than property enough in the other states, viz., Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, which is held by rebels, and is liable to confiscation, to make up for all that is held by loyal men in the States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, which I have included in the above amount. If, now, this property may be confiscated and sold to pay the debt of this war, it will go a good way, at least, towards paying the whole of it. If it may not be confiscated for anything more than the life of its present owners, but very little can ever be realized out of it, and this enormous debt must fall with crashing weight upon the wealth and the industry of our country.

The doubt concerning the right to confiscate the property of those who are now in rebellion, to the use of the United States, arises chiefly from words which occur in Art. 3, Sec. 3, of the Constitution, thus: "but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted." These words seem to be quite explicit. They are, however, a little peculiar, and such as that their meaning is not very obvious without some explanation. The most natural and proper recourse in such cases is to the decisions of United States Courts, and failing there, to the debates in the Convention that framed the Constitution, or the cotemporaneous explanations given by those who introduced the language into the Constitution.

But there have been no decisions in the United States courts, or in any others, so far as I can find. The act of Congress passed April 30th, 1790, providing for the punishment of treason, does not include forfeiture of property as a part of the punishment; and all the cases in our courts have been under that statute in such a way, as not to raise the question of the meaning of this clause of the Constitution for adjudication.

On referring to the records of the debates, published by Elliot, as well as to "The Madison Papers," it does not appear that these words of the Constitution were discussed at all. It is true, that, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, says, in speaking